You make some good points. You have to keep in mind though that you are used to using Windows. There are so many distros out there purely for the fact that Linux is about freedom of choice. The points you make are about Linux "replacing" Windows. It's an alternative, pure and simple. If you want to use it fine, learn it. I know it's not what you are used to, and that's most people's valid point. Remember though that you always have the freedom of choice in the matter. You mentioned you tried Gentoo, which is what I'm on now. Just because I'm able to use it or prefer to use it doesn't mean you have to. It doesn't mean I'm "smarter" or more l337 or whatever. It means I came to the point where I wanted to learn Linux and I took the time and did just that. If you want to mold the OS in the way that you described become a part of it. If not don't worry about it. I've seen a lot of Windows users straight our flaming Linux on sites like Slashdot and Digg lately. I truly don't understand why. Linux users can be discussing Linux and some random Windows user will shoot off how much they love Windows and hate Linux. That's fine if they feel that way. It's their freedom of choice. But if Linux and Freebsd and the like didn't exist we'd all ( every damn one of us ) be in a forum somewhere talking about how much Windows sucks. You post is one of the few I've seen that weren't just blatant flames toward Linux and it's users. Thanks for that. If you ever want to give it again sometime I'd be glad to help. Once you are used to one thing though it's hard to adjust to something else. A lot of people forget that and expect it to work their way from the beginning. It 'd be like taking an algebra class and demanding that it work my way or I'll just stick with elementary math. Some things are worth learning. I find Linux is one of those things. I see some things that could be worked on. That's the cool part about Open Source though. I have the freedom to learn, use, and fix whatever I see fit. The development of it is so fast though someone will have probably already fixed it by the time I start. If not though, I can give back to the community that has provided me with a very nice OS.
I've never bought a whole new system. I don't have any of the components I started out with in 96 but I've never bought an entire system at once. If my system gets sluggish I buy what needs upgrading whether it be a new Motherboard/CPU/RAM, Vid Card, HDD, CDROM, or whatever. It's always improving. I wouldn't have a clue what the value of my current system is either.
6600 will play any game 6 month from now above 25 fps. Mid-grade cards are best for budget....Plus 6 months from now that 7800 will be half the price and mid-grade itself
well I could also vnc in as well...giving me full gui access....but with ssh I can remote admin even a computer on a very slow connection. That's the longest rant I've ever read on how a GUI is better than a command line. I was just saying that that is what I use. It's the easiest fastest way to fix ANY problems for me.
You gave them root? Ubuntu huh....you showed them how to SUDO it. That was the problem. That's why windows gets messed up. People with admin rights doing stuff when they have no idea what they are doing.
When did Windows users get the elitist attitude of the linux crowd? You can configure a Windows machine to never crash. That's great I can to. Its seems most people think that since you use linux you've never used Windows. Of course I can set up an unbreakable Windows XP install too. That's not the point. Hardware vendors not supporting my OS is the only problem with Linux becoming more than what it has so far. Linux is held back because of Microsoft's "Treaties" with hardware vendors. If you keep using their OS they retain that power as long as they want.
Imagine a world of only Ford Cars. A few people decide they want to drive Honda's, VW's, and Chevys. No one makes parts for anything but Fords. Let's just all drive Fords and let them charge $100k for each one. We can always get a second mortage on our house.
Let me guess, you switched from a Red-hat based Linux distro back to Windows didn't you? Really you are flaming someone that is not a programmer, does not live in his parent's basement(if I did I wouldn't need SSH to log in to their machine, I'd just walk upstairs), shower daily, and I'm married. My wife uses Debian on her laptop. She has never broke it. It does everything she wants. I just had to set it up once and cron updates. She gets no spyware, no viruses, and no malware of any kind. XP is good OS don't get me wrong. Why pay $100 for every new version of Windows when you can have a constantly update OS there for free. I do as much if not more on my Debian Desktop as any Windows user.
I find it annoying when people say linux isn't ready for the desktop, or their mom and dad couldn't use linux. Compared to Windows, Linux is harder for "mom and dad" to break. Most of my family uses Windows. They are constantly needing help with their computers. I could set up a Debian Desktop for them that they couldn't break and would do everything they need a computer to do. If they had any probs, I could SSH in and fix it at a command line in no time. There are a few Distro's that try to make it easy for Windows users to migrate. These distro's tend to break nearly as easy as Windows. I tried Xandros and felt that the package selection was a little limited. They also basically just renamed some of the programs and gave it different icons and such. It is based on Debian so that, to me, is a plus. Compared to vanilla Debian though it seems lacking to me.
Linux is my Desktop. How can it not be ready?
Well, when you start seeing them decompose for no reason you'll see my point. Cd's did the same thing. I have a couple of those 200 disk cases with plastic sleeves. I have to this day a "Blade Runner" cd set that has been kept in there because I liked that game a lot when it first came out. It has stayed in that case and the case has stayed on a shelf for about 3 years. When it was put up, there was nothing wrong with the disks. Now, all the disks have see-through holes in them. You can hold them up to a light and it looks like a bunch of stars or something. Unless there's a CD gnome running around destroying cd's with a needle I can't explain how this happened. This is just one example of how stored CD's deteriorate. If you've never had this happen then you are lucky.
Exactly, for all those downing Linux for hardware support, start looking at the one to blame. Your hardware vendors are the ones not supporting the OS. Its not the other way around. A lot of coders in the Linux community have spent plenty of their free time back-engineering devices to write drivers. It used to be a lot worse but slowly hardware manufactures are releasing Linux drivers. Windows has all those drivers because the hardware people support Windows. On a side note: I have Debian and Windows on my PC. I have Windows to play two games that I can't get to run in Linux using Cedega. When I installed Windows I spent 20 minutes trying to get the right sound card driver downloaded from Windows Update. When I installed Debian, everything was detected correctly and worked. Linux has come a long way. It's done it without the support from hardware vendors that MS has. Imagine how far it would go with that support.
everyone is saying dvd's are better than vhs....I have vhs tapes that still work and dvd that don't...they may not look as good but when a 20 year old vhs works and a 5 year dvd doesn't then i don't see that as an upgrade
My theory is that all the hard working cheap laborers in some old civilization got fed up with everyone else so they built a raft and piled about 20,000 people on it and pushed it to Mexico about 20,000 years ago. They then planted some agave, made tequila and started celebrating.
You know unless I'm just totally clueless he should have just left the "this works with windows blah blah and linux 8.0+" out of the whole message. It's a firefox extension right? So wouldn't firefox version requirement have been sufficient?
The point I was trying to make was if someone breaks "any" distro by doing something stupid like rm -rf / then they shouldn't try Gentoo. Do you think they are ready in configure and compile their own kernel?
debian boots to 92mb of memory usage and 0 swap for me...and i haven't even cleaned the services up that i don't need...i've used just about every redhat based distro and they all seem to crawl compared to debian based to me...
I used to love Red Hat based distro's including FC3, Mandriva, and Suse. That was until I tried Ubuntu. It turned me on to the world of Debian. Now I run Debian. Yesterday, I got my shipment of 60 cd sets from Ubuntu I ordered about a month ago. They came in a huge box. If these had been Windows disks it would have cost me at least $6,000, especially after shipping. Ubuntu sent them for free. It'd be one thing if it was a junky OS. It's not. It's a very nice clean distro that is a great introduction to Linux. I'm proud to be giving these out to people around me. Everyone here should do the same with their favorite distro.
If one can break FC4 that easily, one should not try Gentoo. Also, if one wants to do something quickly, such as update, one should not try Gentoo. If one wants to remain in harmony with the world, one should use a Debian based distro to ease the pain and suffering of the slashdot community.
Or you could try Gentoo!
Keaton was good but Kilmer was better. As far as Reeves playing superman...please somebody kill him before he gets the chance. He sucks majorly at every role he's ever played. Just because his last name sounds like the greatest superman actor ever doesn't make him qualified for it!
I was thinking about my bbs days about three months ago and the thought crossed my mind that there maybe some that you can access through the internet. What I found nearly brought a tear of joy to my eye. There are thousands. All of them can be easily accessed through telnet. I believe Wildcat even makes a telnet client to access them. I've been playing LORD ever since.
Slashdot Mirror
You make some good points. You have to keep in mind though that you are used to using Windows. There are so many distros out there purely for the fact that Linux is about freedom of choice. The points you make are about Linux "replacing" Windows. It's an alternative, pure and simple. If you want to use it fine, learn it. I know it's not what you are used to, and that's most people's valid point. Remember though that you always have the freedom of choice in the matter. You mentioned you tried Gentoo, which is what I'm on now. Just because I'm able to use it or prefer to use it doesn't mean you have to. It doesn't mean I'm "smarter" or more l337 or whatever. It means I came to the point where I wanted to learn Linux and I took the time and did just that. If you want to mold the OS in the way that you described become a part of it. If not don't worry about it. I've seen a lot of Windows users straight our flaming Linux on sites like Slashdot and Digg lately. I truly don't understand why. Linux users can be discussing Linux and some random Windows user will shoot off how much they love Windows and hate Linux. That's fine if they feel that way. It's their freedom of choice. But if Linux and Freebsd and the like didn't exist we'd all ( every damn one of us ) be in a forum somewhere talking about how much Windows sucks. You post is one of the few I've seen that weren't just blatant flames toward Linux and it's users. Thanks for that. If you ever want to give it again sometime I'd be glad to help. Once you are used to one thing though it's hard to adjust to something else. A lot of people forget that and expect it to work their way from the beginning. It 'd be like taking an algebra class and demanding that it work my way or I'll just stick with elementary math. Some things are worth learning. I find Linux is one of those things. I see some things that could be worked on. That's the cool part about Open Source though. I have the freedom to learn, use, and fix whatever I see fit. The development of it is so fast though someone will have probably already fixed it by the time I start. If not though, I can give back to the community that has provided me with a very nice OS.
I've never bought a whole new system. I don't have any of the components I started out with in 96 but I've never bought an entire system at once. If my system gets sluggish I buy what needs upgrading whether it be a new Motherboard/CPU/RAM, Vid Card, HDD, CDROM, or whatever. It's always improving. I wouldn't have a clue what the value of my current system is either.
Cheap PSU's will also fry a good Motherboard. Your PSU is very important. If it's broke....the rest of your components are rendered useless.
6600 will play any game 6 month from now above 25 fps. Mid-grade cards are best for budget....Plus 6 months from now that 7800 will be half the price and mid-grade itself
It's Windoze because it bores us
well I could also vnc in as well...giving me full gui access....but with ssh I can remote admin even a computer on a very slow connection. That's the longest rant I've ever read on how a GUI is better than a command line. I was just saying that that is what I use. It's the easiest fastest way to fix ANY problems for me.
You gave them root? Ubuntu huh....you showed them how to SUDO it. That was the problem. That's why windows gets messed up. People with admin rights doing stuff when they have no idea what they are doing.
When did Windows users get the elitist attitude of the linux crowd? You can configure a Windows machine to never crash. That's great I can to. Its seems most people think that since you use linux you've never used Windows. Of course I can set up an unbreakable Windows XP install too. That's not the point. Hardware vendors not supporting my OS is the only problem with Linux becoming more than what it has so far. Linux is held back because of Microsoft's "Treaties" with hardware vendors. If you keep using their OS they retain that power as long as they want. Imagine a world of only Ford Cars. A few people decide they want to drive Honda's, VW's, and Chevys. No one makes parts for anything but Fords. Let's just all drive Fords and let them charge $100k for each one. We can always get a second mortage on our house.
Let me guess, you switched from a Red-hat based Linux distro back to Windows didn't you? Really you are flaming someone that is not a programmer, does not live in his parent's basement(if I did I wouldn't need SSH to log in to their machine, I'd just walk upstairs), shower daily, and I'm married. My wife uses Debian on her laptop. She has never broke it. It does everything she wants. I just had to set it up once and cron updates. She gets no spyware, no viruses, and no malware of any kind. XP is good OS don't get me wrong. Why pay $100 for every new version of Windows when you can have a constantly update OS there for free. I do as much if not more on my Debian Desktop as any Windows user.
I find it annoying when people say linux isn't ready for the desktop, or their mom and dad couldn't use linux. Compared to Windows, Linux is harder for "mom and dad" to break. Most of my family uses Windows. They are constantly needing help with their computers. I could set up a Debian Desktop for them that they couldn't break and would do everything they need a computer to do. If they had any probs, I could SSH in and fix it at a command line in no time. There are a few Distro's that try to make it easy for Windows users to migrate. These distro's tend to break nearly as easy as Windows. I tried Xandros and felt that the package selection was a little limited. They also basically just renamed some of the programs and gave it different icons and such. It is based on Debian so that, to me, is a plus. Compared to vanilla Debian though it seems lacking to me. Linux is my Desktop. How can it not be ready?
I think he may have been referring to MS as the monopoly that the government has stopped in its tracks.
Strange for some reason I thought MS bought/took the terraserver stuff from someone a long time ago.
Oregon Trail was my fave for the Apple II
Well, when you start seeing them decompose for no reason you'll see my point. Cd's did the same thing. I have a couple of those 200 disk cases with plastic sleeves. I have to this day a "Blade Runner" cd set that has been kept in there because I liked that game a lot when it first came out. It has stayed in that case and the case has stayed on a shelf for about 3 years. When it was put up, there was nothing wrong with the disks. Now, all the disks have see-through holes in them. You can hold them up to a light and it looks like a bunch of stars or something. Unless there's a CD gnome running around destroying cd's with a needle I can't explain how this happened. This is just one example of how stored CD's deteriorate. If you've never had this happen then you are lucky.
Exactly, for all those downing Linux for hardware support, start looking at the one to blame. Your hardware vendors are the ones not supporting the OS. Its not the other way around. A lot of coders in the Linux community have spent plenty of their free time back-engineering devices to write drivers. It used to be a lot worse but slowly hardware manufactures are releasing Linux drivers. Windows has all those drivers because the hardware people support Windows. On a side note: I have Debian and Windows on my PC. I have Windows to play two games that I can't get to run in Linux using Cedega. When I installed Windows I spent 20 minutes trying to get the right sound card driver downloaded from Windows Update. When I installed Debian, everything was detected correctly and worked. Linux has come a long way. It's done it without the support from hardware vendors that MS has. Imagine how far it would go with that support.
everyone is saying dvd's are better than vhs....I have vhs tapes that still work and dvd that don't...they may not look as good but when a 20 year old vhs works and a 5 year dvd doesn't then i don't see that as an upgrade
My theory is that all the hard working cheap laborers in some old civilization got fed up with everyone else so they built a raft and piled about 20,000 people on it and pushed it to Mexico about 20,000 years ago. They then planted some agave, made tequila and started celebrating.
You know unless I'm just totally clueless he should have just left the "this works with windows blah blah and linux 8.0+" out of the whole message. It's a firefox extension right? So wouldn't firefox version requirement have been sufficient?
I was reading it waiting for him to say something like "you can download your movies before the dvd comes out, christian"
The point I was trying to make was if someone breaks "any" distro by doing something stupid like rm -rf / then they shouldn't try Gentoo. Do you think they are ready in configure and compile their own kernel?
debian boots to 92mb of memory usage and 0 swap for me...and i haven't even cleaned the services up that i don't need...i've used just about every redhat based distro and they all seem to crawl compared to debian based to me...
I used to love Red Hat based distro's including FC3, Mandriva, and Suse. That was until I tried Ubuntu. It turned me on to the world of Debian. Now I run Debian. Yesterday, I got my shipment of 60 cd sets from Ubuntu I ordered about a month ago. They came in a huge box. If these had been Windows disks it would have cost me at least $6,000, especially after shipping. Ubuntu sent them for free. It'd be one thing if it was a junky OS. It's not. It's a very nice clean distro that is a great introduction to Linux. I'm proud to be giving these out to people around me. Everyone here should do the same with their favorite distro.
If one can break FC4 that easily, one should not try Gentoo. Also, if one wants to do something quickly, such as update, one should not try Gentoo. If one wants to remain in harmony with the world, one should use a Debian based distro to ease the pain and suffering of the slashdot community. Or you could try Gentoo!
Keaton was good but Kilmer was better. As far as Reeves playing superman...please somebody kill him before he gets the chance. He sucks majorly at every role he's ever played. Just because his last name sounds like the greatest superman actor ever doesn't make him qualified for it!
I was thinking about my bbs days about three months ago and the thought crossed my mind that there maybe some that you can access through the internet. What I found nearly brought a tear of joy to my eye. There are thousands. All of them can be easily accessed through telnet. I believe Wildcat even makes a telnet client to access them. I've been playing LORD ever since.